The Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) is often described as one of the three pillars of the World Trade Organization (WTO). This paper examines the apparent lack of agreement between the two major international instruments; namely TRIPs and the Convention on Biological diversity (CBD). The Trips agreement defines minimum standards of protection for intellectual property rights (IPRs). This paper argues that current forms of bilateralism on IP has negative consequences for developing countries because the